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Halloween – Should Christians Celebrate It or Not?

I’ve been on just about every side of this fence. As a child, my parents thought nothing of the holiday and I dressed up and trick or treated like crazy.

As a new mommy, I looked forward to dressing up my young babies and parading them around while waiting for them to post-sugar crash so I could steal all the Reese’s!

But then a few years after, I become friends with some women who had been Bible-studying believers a lot longer than me. They were convinced that Halloween was the devil’s holiday. They would never dream of participating in any part of the holiday and basically relegated themselves to a back corner of their home Halloween night with every light in the house off so no one would mistakenly knock on their door.

The following year we were away in a foreign city over Halloween and the hotel owner advised us not to leave the hotel Halloween night. Not even a believer, he said that the city became like Soddom and Gomorrah after sunset (his words, not mine). He sent a bevy of sweet treats to our hotel room and we watched Nemo from our beachfront suite.

It caused me to rethink the holiday a bit and we decided for several years to have our own family night and the children actually preferred a repeat of the custom that began that night while we were on vacation.

But then, the girls grew up a bit. We discussed what Halloween meant to US, what was the upside, what was the downside. We decided that sharing Jesus with neighbors and friends we would be visiting door to door was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Over the last few years we’ve given out church invites, tracts, and mini-bibles. This year we will be passing out our family photo cards with a church invite and candy sweet treat for the moms and dads we come across. And I know there will be parents on both sides of this arguement and before we start shooting at one another, I’d like you to see this day for what it is…an opportunity that the devil takes all too frequently to cause division among the Lord’s saints.

If you are personally convicted against any kind of trick-or-treating or halloween decor, then please, stay your course. Perhaps the Holy Spirit has His reasons for you and yours to avoid such things.

And if you feel personally fine with going door to door and grabbing handfuls of sweetness, then by all means, do so.

I, for one, will not participate in judging anyone’s spirituality based on my own personal convictions, and since this website is to be an encouraging safe haven for parents to come and receive encouragement, I will not allow anyone here to comment derogatory remarks.

“So let no one judge you in food or drink, regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which were a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” – Col. 2:15-17